• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.379-386
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• 2022

Emergency medical services (EMS) personnel are at high risk for adverse mental health outcomes during disease outbreaks. To support the development of evidence-informed mitigation strategies, we conducted a scoping review to identify the extent of research pertaining to EMS personnel's mental health during disease outbreaks and summarized key factors associated with mental health outcomes. We systematically searched three databases for articles containing keywords within three concepts: EMS personnel, disease outbreaks, and mental health. We screened and retained original peer-reviewed articles that discussed, in English, EMS personnel's mental health during disease outbreaks. Where inferential statistics were reported, the associations between individual and work-related factors and mental health outcomes were synthesized. Twenty-five articles were eligible for data extraction. Our findings suggest that many of the contributing factors for adverse mental health outcomes are related to inadequacies in fulfilling EMS personnel's basic safety and informational needs. In preparation for future disease outbreaks, resources should be prioritized toward ensuring adequate provisions of personal protective equipment and infection prevention and control training. This scoping review serves as a launching pad for further research and intervention development.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Pressure Vessels and Piping
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.87-100
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• 2022

Unit capacity factor (utilization rate) of nuclear power plants (NPPs) is an important performance indicator. Since the first commercial operation of Kori Unit 1 began in April 1978, the utilization rate of domestic NPPs has gradually increased, reaching 90% from the end of the 1990s. However, due to various issues such as the Fukushima accident in 2011, corrosion of the CLP, the utilization rate dropped to 65~80%. In the early 1980s, the utilization rate of the U.S. NPPs was around 60%. However, since 2004, it has been consistently maintained above 90%. Therefore, in this study, we first examined the causes of declining the utilization rate in domestic NPPs. Next, the significances of the utilization rates are reviewed in five aspects: investment capability, electricity rate, safety and export, etc., with discussion on the current status of the utilization rates in the U.S. Based on this, three key factors are derived as the reasons of the increasing: equipment reliability program, on-line maintenance and the pursuit of institutional rationality. And finally, by synthesizing above results, the measures for increasing the utilization rate of domestic NPPs are proposed in terms of equipment management, institutional improvements, and personnel resources.

• Korean Journal of Social Welfare
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.131-153
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• 2008

Based upon the first national sample of adult men and women, the study aims to examine the prevalence of chid sexual abuse in Korea and factors related to the incidence of child sexual abuse. The results of the study show that 20.8% of the sample experienced one or more types of sexual abuse in their childhood, which indicates that Korean society is not any longer immune to child sexual abuse. With regard to how to cope with sexual abuse, "not informed to anyone and did not get any help at all" is the most major one for all types of sexual abuse. Even those who got help were reported to depend heavily upon private routes such as parents, relatives, or friends, indicating the urgency of establishing systematic intervention schemes for the problem. The results of a logistic regression analysis show that gender of the child, involvement in delinquent behaviors, economic status of the family, number of siblings, and residence in high-crime region are significantly related to the incidence of child sexual abuse. These results of the study would be expected to provide a useful guideline for developing policies or intervention programs aimed to prevent or address child sexual abuse.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2009

Auto-navigation algorithm have been studied to avoid collision and grounding of a ship due to human error. There have been many research on collision avoidance algorithms but they have been validated little on the real coastal traffic situation. In this study, a Collision Avoidance algorithm is developed by using Fuzzy algorithm and the concept of Changeable Action Space Searching (CAS). In the first step, on a basis of collision risk calculated from fuzzy algorithm in the current time(t=to), alternative Action Space for collision avoidance is planned. In the second step, next alternative Action Space for collision avoidance in the future($t=to+{\Delta}t$) is corrected and re-planned with re-evaluated collision risk. In the third step, the safest and most effective course among Action Space is selected by using optimization method in real time. In this paper, the main features of the developed collision avoidance algorithm (CAS) are introduced. CAS is implemented in the ship-handling simulator of MOERI. The performance of CAS is tested on the situation of open sea with 3 traffic ships, whose position is assumed to be informed from AIS. Own-ship is fully autonomously navigated by autopilot including the collision avoidance algorithm, CAS. Experimental results show that own-ship can successfully avoid the collision against traffic ships and the calculated courses from CAS are reasonable.

• Journal of Genetic Medicine
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.72-78
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• 2018

Purpose: Physicians' attitudes may have a strong influence on women's decision regarding prenatal screening options. The aim of this study is to assess the physicians' attitudes toward prenatal screening for fetal aneuploidy including non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) in South Korea. Materials and Methods: Questionnaires were distributed and collected at several obstetrics-gynecological conferences and meetings. The questionnaire included 31 multiple choice and 5 fill-in-the-blank questions. Seven questions requested physicians' demographic information, 17 questions requested information about the NIPT with cell-free fetal DNA, and 12 questions requested information about general prenatal screening practices. Results: Of the 203 obstetricians that completed the survey. In contrast with professional guidelines recommending the universal offering of aneuploidy screening, only 53.7% answered that prenatal aneuploidy testing (screening and/or invasive diagnostic testing) should be offered to all pregnant women. Physicians tended to have positive attitudes toward the clinical application of NIPT as both primary and secondary screening methods for patients at high-risk for fetal trisomy. However, for patients at average-risk for fetal trisomy, physicians tended to have positive attitudes only as a secondary screening method. Physicians with more knowledge about NIPT were found to tend to inform their patients that the detection rate of NIPT is higher. Conclusion: This is the first study to investigate expert opinion on prenatal screening in South Korea. Education of physicians is essential to ensure responsible patient counseling, informed consent, and appropriate management after NIPT.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.273-282
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• 2023

Probabilistic safety assessment (PSA) has been widely used to evaluate the seismic risk of nuclear power plants (NPPs). However, studies on seismic PSA for process plants, such as gas plants, oil refineries, and chemical plants, have been scarce. This is because the major disasters to which these process plants are vulnerable include explosions, fires, and release (or dispersion) of toxic chemicals. However, seismic PSA is essential for the plants located in regions with significant earthquake risks. Seismic PSA entails probabilistic seismic hazard analysis (PSHA), event tree analysis (ETA), fault tree analysis (FTA), and fragility analysis for the structures and essential equipment items. Among those analyses, ETA can depict the accident sequence for core damage, which is the worst disaster and top event concerning NPPs. However, there is no general top event with regard to process plants. Therefore, PSA cannot be directly applied to process plants. Moreover, there is a paucity of studies on developing fragility curves for various equipment. This paper introduces PSA for gas plants based on FTA, which is then transformed into Bayesian network, that is, a probabilistic graph model that can aid risk-informed decision-making. Finally, the proposed method is applied to a gas plant, and several decision-making cases are demonstrated.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.936-949
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• 2023

On August 3, 2023, a brutal incident of unprovoked violence, termed as "Abnormal motivated crime," occurred in a multi-use facility, where retail and transportation facilities converge, near Seohyeon Station. The assailant drove onto the sidewalk, hitting pedestrians, and then entered a department store where a knife rampage ensued, resulting in a total of 14 victims. In the aftermath of this incident, numerous murder threats were posted on social media, causing widespread anxiety among the public. This fear was further exacerbated by the emergence of a "Terrorless.01ab.net" service. Purpose: This research aims to explore necessary institutional improvements for private security personnel who protect customers and employees in multi-use facilities, to enable them to perform their duties more effectively. Method: To assess the risk of Abnormal motivated crime, a time series analysis using the ARIMA model was conducted to analyze the domestic trends of such crimes. Additionally, Result: the study presents suggestions for improvements in the domestic security service law and emergency manuals for multi-use facilities. Conclusion: This is informed by a legal analysis of the indemnity rights for weapon use by private security guards abroad and their operational authority beyond weapon usage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.389-397
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• 1998

For an effective and efficient management of large amounts of preservice/inservice inspection(PSI/ISI) data in nuclear power plants, an intellegent Windows 95-based data management program was developed. This program enables the prompt extraction of previously conducted PSI/ISI conditions and results so that the time-consuming data management, painstaking data processing and analysis in the past are avoided. The program extracts, and the associated remedies. Furthermore, additional inspection data and comments can be easily added or deleted for subsequent PSI/ISI operation. Although the initial version of the program was applied to Kori nuclear power plant, this program can be equally applied to other nuclear power plant. And also this program can be used to offer the fundamental data for application of evaluation data related to fracture mechanics analysis(FMA), probabilistic reliability assessment(PRA) of PSI/ISI results, performance demonstration initiative(PDI) and risk-informed ISI based on probability of detection(POD) information of ultrasonic examination. Besides, the program can be further developed as a unique PSI/ISI data management expert system that can be apart of PSI/ISI data management expert system that can be a part of PSI/ISI Total Support System(TSS) for Korean nuclear power plants.

• Archives of Plastic Surgery
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• v.38 no.6
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• pp.883-885
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• 2011

Purpose: Nevus sebaceus is a congenital hamartomatous lesion, typically involving head and neck. Various benign and malignant neoplasms can develop in association with nevus sebaceus. We report a case of simultaneous occurrence of squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma in nevus sebaceus. Methods: A 73-year-old man presented with erythematous to black verrucous nodules on the right subauricular area. The upper part was accompanied with inflammation and ulceration, and no specific findings suspicious for malignant degeneration were found in the lower part preoperatively. The mass was totally excised and the defect was directly closed. Lymph nodes were not involved on concomitant neck dissection. Results: Histopathologic examination confirmed the presence of squamous cell carcinoma in the upper part and basal cell carcinoma in the lower part of a nevus sebaceus. Negative margins were achieved on resection. No clinical problems were found during the 3-month follow-up period. Conclusion: We experienced a rare case of simultaneous occurrence of squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma within the same nevus sebaceus. Because patients with nevus sebaceus have risk of malignant changes, surgical excision and work-up for recurrence and metastasis should be considered in suspicious cases. And even in a totally asymptomatic case, the possibility of occult secondary cancer should be informed before surgery in aged patients.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.736-751
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• 2008

Although a growing number of studies have commonly used a simple areal weighting interpolation method to quantify demographic characteristics of impacted areas in environmental equity analysis, the results obtained are inevitably imprecise because of the method's unrealistic assumption that population is evenly distributed within a census enumeration unit. Two alternative areal interpolation methods such as intelligent areal weighting and regression methods can account for the distributional biases in the estimation of impacted populations by making use of additional information about the geographic distribution of population. This research explores five areal interpolation methods for estimating the population characteristics of impacted areas in environmental equity analysis and evaluates the sensitivity of the outcomes of environmental equity analysis to areal interpolation methods. This study used GIS techniques to allow areal interpolation to be informed by the distribution of land cover types, as inferred from a satellite image. in both the source and target units. Independent samples t-test statistics were measured to verify the environmental equity hypothesis while coefficients of variation were calculated to compare the relative variability and consistency in the socioeconomic characteristics of populations at risk over different areal interpolation methods. Results show that the outcomes of environmental equity analysis in the study area are not sensitive to the areal interpolation methods used in estimating affected populations, but the population estimates within the impacted areas are largely variable as different areal interpolation methods are used. This implies that the use of different areal interpolation methods may to some degree alter the statistical results of environmental equity analysis.